Wednesday's interesting reads - 6/18/08

"New York's Novel Way to Kill Charter Schools" WSJ op-ed by Amy Friedman and Peter Murphy:

"Recently, Tapestry won approval to add high school grades, and this is where the trouble started. To accommodate these new grades as well as serve the other students, the school decided to build a new building. It expected to pay about $8.5 million.

But last autumn, as a sop to labor unions, Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith ordered charter schools to adhere to state "prevailing wage" requirements, which mandate paying union wages for construction projects and which typically add 30% or more to the cost of a project. In Tapestry's case, it would add more than $1.5 million, putting the school's building expansion plans on hold."

Amy Friedman and Peter Murphy wrote a fantastic piece ("New York's Novel Way to Kill Charter Schools", June 18) that highlights the problems with government officials picking winners and losers. In their case, the choice was between organized labor and education alternatives, with the former being selected at the expense of the latter. Unfortunately, government does this all the time: from FDR's restriction of farmland that artificially increased prices for farmers to the mandated use of certain technologies like catalytic converters, scrubbers, and ethanol to local municipalities preventing the expansion of big-box stores to protect independent retailers. Since elected officials have made it known they are willing to hand out political favors to certain groups at the expense of others, those groups that can organize themselves would be foolish not to hire lobbying firms to help get pass legislation favorable to them. Is it any wonder, then, that lobbyists have become the villains du jour? Why are we still so comfortable with the idea of politicians arbitrarily picking these winners and loosing rather than letting the choice fall to all of us as we go about living our lives?

Matt Hutchison
Atlanta, Georgia

"Lawmakers vow to fight InBev-Anheuser deal" Reuters:

"After meeting with InBev's chief executive, Sen. Christopher Bond, a Republican, issued a statement saying, "My Missouri constituents say, 'This Bud's not for you'."

InBev CEO Carlos Brito has said he wants a friendly deal and vowed to keep the home of Budweiser, America's 'King of Beers,' in St. Louis. He also hired several Washington lobbying firms including one headed by former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.
"When you hear promises, St. Louis has had bad experiences having promises turning into pink slips," Bond, a Republican, told Reuters.

Missouri's other U.S. senator, Democrat Claire McCaskill, sent a letter to Anheuser's board of directors on Wednesday. She urged them to reject the deal and consider what the brewer represents to her state and the country.

U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Democrat from Missouri, called Anheuser-Busch an American icon and said it is consistently ranked one of the top U.S. companies.

"It would be very shortsighted for the board or shareholders to accept short-term stock values at the expense of the long-term benefit of the company," Carnahan said."

This kind of stuff is so stupid and such a waste of time. Why do we care about who owns the company? It isn't a strategic interest.

"John McCain's SimCity Energy Plan" by Jerry Taylor with Cato:

"For those of you not in the cultural “know,” Sim-City is a long-standing series of computer games which asks the player to essentially play the role of a Stalinist super-planner. What to build, where to build, and how people are to relate to all those buildings in your custom-designed city is up to you, the all-knowing, all-powerful uber-planner.

It’s all good fun in the privacy of your own home (I guess), but is this the sort of game we want the next President to play? I’m going to go out on a limb and say no. John McCain, however, seems to disagree.

Consider, for instance, John McCain’s call earlier this week for the United States to build 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 and another 55 sometime after that. The first question that comes to mind is, why 45? Did the McCain brain trust engage in some high level economic computer modeling to discover that the optimum number of new nuclear power plants is not 42, 47, or some other number … but the nice, round number of 45? I’m going to guess that they did not. I’m going to surrender to my cynical alter-ego and posit that, if one were to ask the question, “Sen. McCain, how exactly did you come to the determination that the economically optimal number of new nuclear power plants is 45 new facilities over the next 22 years?” the answer you would get would likely be totally incomprehensible."